Esther Summerson: My favourite Charles Dickens character - Telegraph Charles Dickens Esther Summerson: My favourite Charles Dickens character Esther Summerson - from Bleak House - is one of Charles Dickens's best female characters and is the eleventh in the Telegraph pick of the best Charles Dickens characters. Robert Ball's illustration of Bleak House with its heroine Esther Summerson. Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens 'excelled in the creation of characters,' said poet TS Eliot By Rachel Ward , Writer, Telegraph TV & Radio 11:33AM GMT 11 Feb 2012 My Favourite Charles Dickens character: Esther Summerson from Bleak House (1854) Charles Dickens’s 10th novel, Bleak House, features one of his most holy of heroines – a mother to all and “angel of the house”: the Oprah Winfrey of the Victorian age, if you will. Unlike the writer’s other angels, Little Dorrit’s Amy; or Sissy Jupe in Hard Times, Esther gets to tell her own story as she narrates a tale centring on a quarrel over an inheritance.

Charlotte Bronte may have described her as “weak and twaddling,” but she’s the only woman that Dickens allows a pen and he brilliantly projects Esther as his type of ideal woman, with her modesty, perceptiveness, and moral responsibility. As her name suggests (it means “star”), she lights up the gloomy and chaotic world of the novel and dispenses her love to the needy, because love is the very thing she needs in return. As an illegitimate daughter, Esther faces numerous bitter experiences in Victorian society and takes a great dislike to those she feels unworthy of her virtues – her handling of the incorrigibly irresponsible Harold Skimpole is perhaps one of her finest moments as she politely refuses his proposal, all the while letting him know exactly what she thinks of him. The full series of 'My favourite Charles Dickens character' is: Esther Summerson Esther Summerson Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List In literature, as in life, troubles and suffering tend to be emotionally powerful and to arouse our interest and compassion — to some extent even when the sufferer is a far-from-admirable person or character.

We are not shown, in any detail, the inner suffering of Honoria Dedlock, but at least we know that her suffering exists. With Esther Summerson, even this source of interest in the character is mostly lacking. Except for her earliest years, when she was being raised by her rather unfeeling aunt (Miss Barbary), and during a short period of dismay and self-doubt after the scarring of her face by smallpox, Esther has lived a life far from rich in the drama of troubles and suffering. She dwells, throughout most of the story, in security and comfort and looks forward to a happy marriage with her guardian. Then she acquires even better prospects when her husband turns out to be Allan Woodcourt, who seems to be both dashing and solid. But the difficulty Esther experiences when she is trying to keep the identity of her mother a secret is not intense or long lasting. In literature, as in life, troubles and suffering tend to be emotionally powerful and to arouse our interest and compassion — to some extent even when the sufferer is a far-from-admirable person or character.

We are not shown, in any detail, the inner suffering of Honoria Dedlock, but at least we know that her suffering exists. With Esther Summerson, even this source of interest in the character is mostly lacking. Except for her earliest years, when she was being raised by her rather unfeeling aunt (Miss Barbary), and during a short period of dismay and self-doubt after the scarring of her face by smallpox, Esther has lived a life far from rich in the drama of troubles and suffering. She dwells, throughout most of the story, in security and comfort and looks forward to a happy marriage with her guardian. Then she acquires even better prospects when her husband turns out to be Allan Woodcourt, who seems to be both dashing and solid. But the difficulty Esther experiences when she is trying to keep the identity of her mother a secret is not intense or long lasting. Esther is also too uncomplicated to be one of the great heroines of literature. Complication makes for lifelikeness.

It also challenges us intellectually — we are drawn into a deeper engagement as more and more of a character's complexity is presented to us, for the simple reason that we have to make some effort to understand it, to see the personality as a whole. And in reading, deeper engagement is another term for interest. In her uncomplicated, unfailing goodness, Esther is more of an ideal than a "convincing" character, one that might have been based on a real-life individual. Matters are made worse by the fact that much of the story is narrated by Esther; we have the nagging feeling that much of what she observes and reports is more complicated — hence, more interesting — than her uncomplicated perspective allows us to see. Most of the heroines (or female principals or protagonists) of Dickens' books are somewhat unsatisfying in this way. What may be virtuousness in life becomes faultiness in fiction: The ideal becomes the unreal. But is there more to the matter?

Is it possible that, at least to some extent, we dissociate Esther from all reference to real life and consciously or "instinctively" experience her as the ideal, as the Eternal Feminine, archetypal femininity, a Cinderella or Good Daughter or Beloved Bride figure? If so, then despite her limitations with regard to real-life women, she would affect us and not be a wholly wasted literary portrait. Esther Summerson in Bleak House NEXT Character Analysis A young woman raised by a strict and horrible aunt, Esther narrates her own half of the novel, chronicling how she becomes Ada's governess and the housekeeper of Bleak House, befriends and helps many people in the process, and eventually uncovers the mystery of her birth. House Angel Dickens almost has a patent out on Esther's character type. To put it briefly, she is perfect. No, scratch that – she is the perfect young woman, in all the ways that mattered to our stodgy, prim Victorian ancestors. There's almost a standard list of requirements we can run down to make sure: Looks: Pretty, but not overwhelmingly so? Check. Not too vain to get over some facial scarring? Check. So far so good.

Personality: Humble, modest, quiet, hard-working, and grateful? Yes, indeedy. A good caretaker, and homemaker who generally tends to act only for the benefit of others? Every time. Excellent, excellent. Sex: Represses her own desires? Yes, always. Hard for others to see her as a sexual being? Very much so. OK, then – we've got ourselves a very nice version of the "Angel in the House." That phrase comes from a sappy poem written in 1854 by Coventry Patmore about his wife Emily, summing up the awesome way she rolls, wife-style. The poem wasn't a big hit, but the phrase definitely stuck as a neat shorthand for what makes a "good" woman. She's got to stay in the house doing domestic things (so no pesky jobs, voting, or property ownership for you, ladies!). And she's got to be a ministering angel, constantly taking care of everyone around her (family, friends, random neighborhood poor people), without spending much time taking care of herself (no days off now! and stop looking at yourself in the mirror! well, unless it's just to make yourself attractive for your husband).

You know, no big deal. In real, life of course, it was probably pretty hard to find anyone who actually fit this mold. But apparently every man could dream. And a man like Dickens could dream and write it down. The Modest Narrator Still, this Angel in the House is different in one important way from Dickens's other angels, like Amy in Little Dorrit, Biddy in Great Expectations, Sissy Jupe in Hard Times , or Lizzie Hexam in Our Mutual Friend. She actually gets to speak in her own voice and tell her own story. So what happens when a shy, modest, and self-abnegating character tries to be a narrator – someone who has to speak to others, talk about herself, and describe things with relative honesty? For one thing, because we are getting a lot of the narrating character's thoughts, Esther constantly has to analyze the people she sees, the events she experiences, and her own emotions. All this analysis leads to growth that can actually be demonstrated rather than described. So for instance, at first Esther has only very mild concern about Harold Skimpole, but as she gets older and more self-assured, she goes and actually tells him off.

We, in turn, know that she has changed as a person because we see her going to give him what for rather than simply hearing about it from a third-person narrator. Another way to see growth is in the way Esther becomes more and more willing to be critical about what she sees. So while she describes Mrs. Jellyby in the nicest way possible and tries to find the good in that crazy woman with her philanthropic nonsense, later in the novel she is totally straight with us about Mr. Turveydrop and his selfish, ludicrous existence. She even gets kind of nasty in her (always internal) put-downs. See if you can spot a few toward the end of the novel. All that modesty and self-denial has a narrative drawback, which is easy to see whenever Esther has to describe the way other people think about her. Since she is so perfect, most people are totally bowled over by her, think of her extremely highly, and generally want to be super nice and complimentary to her. But a person who doesn't advertise her own awesomeness would never broadcast this kind of thing. So Dickens solves this problem by having Esther repeat the nice things other people say but then immediately downplay them herself.

It's kind of an imperfect solution – every time she does this, she sounds like she's just fishing for compliments. A justification of the narrative presence of Esther Summerson in Charles Dickens's Bleak house, UNCG NC DOCKS (North Carolina Digital Online Collection of Knowledge and Scholarship) A justification of the narrative presence of Esther Summerson in Charles Dickens's Bleak house UNCW Author/Contributor (non-UNCW co-authors, if there are any, appear on document) Web Site: Abstract: Esther Summerson’s presence as a narrative force in Bleak House has long been a source of debate and object of disdain for many critics. Over time her voice has grown to be defined as weak, self-absorbed, and, most importantly, a mistake. Far from being a mistake, however, Esther’s voice is the most appropriate fit for the novel. Although admittedly self-important and sometimes infuriating, Esther’s narrative is crucial both thematically and structurally in the novel. Hers is the voice of innocence, a shelter from the harsh words of her counterpart, the other voice. Her voice is artless, the eye-witness to the other voice’s artful judge.

Furthermore, she represents the voice of the lost children that run, dirty-faced, throughout the novel: she speaks for Jo, Charley, Peepy, Caddy. The novel’s two voices are essential to maintaining mystery and suspense, and Dickens needed find a voice to counterbalance the knowing, worldly spokesman with which he begins. For this purpose Bleak House requires a narrator of little knowledge, one who is a relative ignorant, after examining the other candidates in the novel we must acknowledge that Esther is the only pragmatic choice. Esther Summerson’s narrative is not without its flaws, most notably her self-aggrandizing, but ultimately she is the right voice to tell the story of Bleak House. Happy 200th Birthday Charles Dickens—Counting Down His Greatest Novels. Number 1: Bleak House | TIME.com Follow @TIMECulture In the middle of Bleak House, the heroine, an orphan named Esther Summerson, gets smallpox and goes blind. The first time I read the novel I was so shocked and upset by this turn of events that I wrote about it in my journal as if it had happened in real life, to someone I knew.

Bleak House is Dickens’ grandest, most virtuosic achievement, but with all that grandeur and virtuosity it still makes me cry for Esther Summerson. The novel is divided into two strands: the story of rich, haughty, reserved Lady Dedlock, told by an omniscient narrator, and Esther’s story, told in her own words. They are connected, as is everything in Bleak House, by the court case Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a tangle of disputed wills and disrupted inheritance that has tied up the High Court of Chancery for decades, suspending the lives of its legatees and incurring costs of 60,000 to 70,000 pounds. When the lawyers of Chancery speak in glowing terms of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which they are wont to do, as a “monument of Chancery practice,” they speak of its interminable procedures, its unending piles of paperwork. They call it “the cause,” but there is no effect. They never speak of justice. (MORE: See all of the entries in our Blogging the Dickens project.

) With his dual narrative structure, Dickens stands above his action and within it. In no other novel is his ventriloquism so cleverly on display. At Chancery and with the Dedlocks, he lays on the pomp and circumstance as if taking the English language and gold-plating it. This is the Dedlocks’ country estate of Chesney Wold left empty, when the couple has gone to town: Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown Holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Dedlock ancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is somber and slow. Let the gardener sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the leaves into full barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the shrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain beats, the windows rattle, and the chimneys growl.

Mists hide in the avenues, veil the points of view, and move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds. The present tense, used throughout this strand of the novel, signals continuity but also oppressive stagnation. The rich, round vowels are full of money. It’s hard to read these sentences aloud; they almost choke the throat. Esther, on the other hand, speaks as you would expect a young woman to speak who is humble, with no lofty connections, raised by a “grave and strict” godmother. I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn a black frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama’s grave. I had never been told where it was. Singled out by a mysterious benefactor (but not Abel Magwitch ) she leaves her godmother for boarding school, and her school for the Chancery court, where she is appointed companion to a young woman named Ada Clare, one of the wards in Jarndyce.

With Ada’s cousin Richard Carstone, another ward, they move into the home of Ada’s and Richard’s relation John Jarndyce, a genial man just a bit past his prime, who would be a party to the suit had he not renounced it years ago as an ill wind that blew no one with his surname good. His home is called Bleak House, but the only bleak thing about it is the distant shadow of Chancery. Esther may speak simply, but she is not always direct. A modest girl, she is coy about compliments, protesting too much when Ada, Richard, John Jarndyce and pretty much everyone else they meet praise her. She can be a little cloying in her emotional attachments to the same. But every time I reread Bleak House, I dwell more and more on Esther’s tempered toughness. Not for nothing did she withstand a friendless childhood, one in which she was repeatedly decried as her unknown mother’s disgrace. As Richard becomes embroiled in the lawsuit and estranged from his cousin John, Esther balances her affection for him with her disappointment, and lets him see both sentiments clearly.

When John Jarndyce’s irresponsible friend Harold Skimpole takes advantage of the household’s generosity it is Esther who exposes him as a fraud. As for William Guppy, the unctuous legal clerk who falls for her charms, she remains heroically firm in the face of his unexpected proposal. Mr. Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table and not much frightened. I said, ‘Get up from that ridiculous position now, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise and ring the bell!’ He gets up. Wouldn’t you? In the introduction to my Penguin edition of Bleak House, J. Hillis Miller, one of the first serious Dickens scholars in America, advises readers to look out for the number of significant deaths in the novel. “I count nine,” he writes, and sometimes, if I’m stuck in line or on the subway with nothing to entertain me, I try in my head to count the nine.

To say that Dickens writes as if for television is more than just to acknowledge his serial composition, it’s also — in the wake of shows like The Sopranos — to suggest that he populates his fictional world richly enough to dispense with a critical mass of its key inhabitants and still keep his story going strong. Even within Dickens’ oeuvre, the only other work that could possibly sustain such a quantity of mortal blows is Our Mutual Friend , and that’s a book where too many people spend too much time near a river. If nine memorable characters die in Bleak House (one of them, most memorably, of spontaneous combustion), imagine how many survive. That gives you a sense of the novel’s scope. Because he worked closely with illustrators, Dickens had to plan his plots sufficiently in advance to give the artist lead-time in which to draw. From Dombey and Son on, his early notes for each novel survive, and the notes for Bleak House provide a master class in complex plotting. The story involves the unraveling of numerous mysteries — beginning with: who is the law writer who calls himself Nemo, and why does Lady Dedlock care to find out?

— which meant the author needed to establish evidence and motive and plant clues along the way. Here are a few of the victims, conspirators and witnesses, in shorthand. Mr. Krook, proprietor of a rag and bone shop full of old documents: “Introduce the old marine store Dealer who has the papers.” The Dedlocks’ mighty lawyer, whose eye nothing escapes: “Mr. Tulkinghorn and Lady Dedlock. Each watching the other.” The crossing-sweep boy, always on the move: “Jo — shadowing forth of Lady Dedlock in the churchyard.” The mad old woman who haunts the courts: “Miss Flite and her birds.” She keeps the birds caged and names two after the wards in Jarndyce. On the day of judgment, she says, she’ll set them free. Esther regains her sight. But she suffers in other ways that both pull one’s heartstrings and serve the story. There’s little in Bleak House, the most efficient 900-page novel you’ll ever read, that doesn’t do one or the other, or both.

When I think about its merits I always remember a rather plain line at the end, spoken by John Jarndyce to Esther (if you’ve read the book, you’ll know what it means): “My dearest, Allan Woodcourt stood beside your father when he lay dead — stood beside your mother.” I love Bleak House because the entire plot coalesces in that one sentence and transforms into poetry. You wouldn’t think it possible if you hadn’t watched it happen, chapter by chapter, word by word. Dickens isn’t interested simply in making connections. He wants the connections to matter. To my mind, they never matter more than in Bleak House. And so, dear reader, you have come to the end of our Blogging the Dickens project. We hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have. Please feel free to leave your thoughts about Bleak House, or any of Dickens’ novels, in the comments section below. Bleak House : Charles Dickens : 9780141198354 Charles Dickens Review quote [Coralie Bickford-Smith's] recent work for Penguin Classics is nothing short of glorious Anna Cole Co.

show more About Charles Dickens Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812. He is the author of such Classics as Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield. In later works, such as Bleak House and Little Dorrit, Dickens's social criticism became more radical and his comedy more savage. His last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never completed and he died on 9 June 1870. show more Review Text [Coralie Bickford-Smith's] recent work for Penguin Classics is nothing short of glorious Anna Cole Co. show more Customer reviews Bleak House is a novel of immense drama and, yes, heart-rending bleakness. Too many innocent people are ruined by the desolate pains surrounding the inhabitants of Bleak House, from a list of unavoidable circumstances. Young Esther Summerson, our heroine, looks upon Mr. Jarndyce as her guardian and protector. As the Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit continues on in Lincoln's Inn Hall year after year, it wrecks many a man involved in British law. Although it is Mr.

Jarndyce and his family's business that tangles the infamous lawsuit, his interests do not lie with it. Instead, one of Esther's dearest friends, Richard, takes on the role of lawyer upon his shoulders; although his eager and young mind hopes to settle matters that have remained snarled for decades, he pays a terrible price. Lady Dedlock is a haunted woman, with her secret always lurking around the corner, ready to be exposed. What she didn't even know was that her child did not die at birth, but has actually been kept alive for all these years since, unbeknownst to her. As her story plays out, the reader finds the moral in not keeping secrets. Jo, a boy destined merely for the streets, fulfilling the only predetermined path his existence could lead to. Mr. Bucket, the detective who happens to be in just the right place to put the pieces together of a very large event on the whole; a man of whom Sherlock Holmes could approve of. Ada, a blessed girl who finds herself directly in the center of Bleak House's most terrible moments, but provides the friendship that Esther Summerson so needs.

Esther Summerson, who simply aims to do the best she can in her situation, just like us all. Through all the emotion, surprises, and heartbreaking news, she's a trooper, that Dame Durden. As these lives and more twist together in connective plots that are so intricate, you see what the real of existence of humanity is degraded to, and yet, what we could be. Personally, Bleak House didn't become my favorite Dickens novel, but it certainly is a well-written piece of Victorian literature. - - - - - - - - - - Mr. Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber, which I found to be in part a little library of books and papers and in part quite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat-boxes. "Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce. "This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here." "You must be here very seldom, sir," said I. "Oh, you don't know me!" he returned. "When I am deceived or disappointed inâ??the wind, and it's easterly, I take refuge here.

The growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of half my humours yet...." show more by Tarissa Charity in the Novels of Charles Dickens | Voluntary Action History Society Voluntary Action History Society Frank Christianson , Brigham Young University “What connexion [sic] can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together?” Dickens spends several hundred thousand words addressing this question posed by the narrator in the opening chapters of Bleak House (1852). Over the course of this darkly satiric novel, and over the course of his entire career, Dickens was deeply occupied with the problem of economic and social difference and the role of charity in shaping mid-Victorian sociality. In Bleak House Dickens employs a host of plot devices to connect characters across geographic and social spaces as he takes the measure of English social sympathies. To the extent that economic and class differences constitute the “great gulf” in Dickens’ social philosophy, the author ultimately finds a way to make philanthropy provide a means of bridging this divide.

Charles Dickens, 1812-1870 This bicentenary year of Charles Dickens’ birth inspires reflection on many aspects of his life and legacy. Charity was certainly central to his work, both as a subject and as a rationale for his particular notion of authorship. Dickens wrote about charity, but his novels were also philanthropic ventures (nowhere more overtly than the gift-wrapped A Christmas Carol). However, Dickens’ preoccupation with charity reflected a much broader cultural shift and should be understood in the context of a mid to late Victorian transformation in the nature and function of philanthropic practice. Writing in the period between the 1834 New Poor Law and the rise of the modern welfare state, Dickens’ witnessed both the economic promise and the privations caused by industrialism. He also saw the emergence of new forms of voluntarism, institutional charity, and state-sponsored solutions to the problem of poverty. His work reflects a ceaseless effort to identify and assess problems and solutions within a framework that promoted social reform while preserving the fundamentals of the Victorian economic order.

Thomas Malthus, 1766-1834 As early as 1843 with A Christmas Carol Dickens had explored issues surrounding the role of philanthropy (and the consequences of misanthropy). The novel’s plot begins with the encounter between Scrooge and the philanthropists on Christmas Eve. In refusing to give, Scrooge echoes the language of political economy: Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) in particular, by designating the poor as a social and economic surplus. Scrooge endorses Malthus’ harsh remedies to the population problem—at one point in the Essay Malthus observes that, when faced with starvation caused by excess population and inadequate food production “[t]he infant is, comparatively speaking, of little value to the society, as others will immediately supply its place”. This perspective becomes the pretext for the haunting of Scrooge that follows, but it is in the initial encounter with the philanthropists that Dickens sets the stage for the rehabilitation of his unsympathetic (un-sympathizing) subject.

Faced with the invitation to give of his surplus, Scrooge expresses his faith in “the Treadmill and the Poor Law.” Poverty relief policy in the form of the 1834 New Poor Law, the stated purpose of which was the “dispauperizing” of the able-bodied, was widely criticized for its punitive treatment of able and disabled alike. The New Poor Law was also criticized for focusing exclusively on the able-to-work adult male while effectively ignoring women, children, and the elderly. Scrooge embodies this form of willful ignorance in his response to the philanthropist’s moral outrage. When told that many poor would rather die than turn to “indoor” relief in the form of the workhouse, Scrooge responds with the incredulous “I don’t know that.” Scrooge, like the poor law commissioner, equates the economic condition of poverty with the moral condition of pauperism and views the workhouse and the prison as interchangeable remedies. 1870s Tiny Tim illustration by Frederick Barnard The appeal for charity forces Scrooge to take a position from which the remainder of the plot works to redeem him.

Dickens deploys the Cratchits, and Tiny Tim in particular, to put a sentimental face on political economy’s “surplus”. Dickens also challenges the world of Malthusian scarcity with images of abundance embodied in sumptuous descriptions of the poulterer and fruiterer shops, and in the oversized turkey Scrooge sends to the Cratchits. A raise in pay is the ultimate solution to the problem of meeting the needs of Bob Cratchit’s burgeoning family. Through the figure of Scrooge as philanthropist Dickens offers a portrait of benevolent capitalism. That philanthropy might play this complementary role was far from self-evident at the time Dickens wrote Bleak House. As an increasingly institutionalized, even professionalized, practice the business of giving had come under attack on multiple fronts. Political economists decried the pauperizing consequences of indiscriminant charity and viewed it as a shadow economy which circulated millions in unregulated (by markets or the state) currency and resources, undermining the principles of laissez faire. Indeed, philanthropy’s professional turn came in response to such criticisms as it developed a more scientific approach to classifying the needy and administering to their needs.

Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881 Dickens’ novel both acknowledges and works against critiques of philanthropy such as Thomas Carlyle’s in Latter-Day Pamphlets published in 1850, two years before Bleak House began to appear serially. Carlyle condemns in no uncertain terms the Philanthropic movement’s “indiscriminate mashing-up of Right and Wrong into a patent treacle” which threatens to “drown human society as in deluges, and leave, instead an ‘edifice of society’ fit for the habitation of men, a continent of fetid ooze inhabitable only for mud-gods and creatures that walk upon their belly.” In Carlyle’s view, philanthropy diverts the “more humane and noble-minded” away from what he terms “real reform:” instead of a focus on the “wellheads [. . .] the chief fountains of these waters of bitterness” relief societies “puddle in the embouchures and drowned outskirts.” Palliative measures that randomly target the symptoms of social ills can only have a perpetuating effect.

Carlyle’s criticisms were part of a rising chorus in the 1850s and ’60s that resulted in efforts to reform through systematization and bureaucratization, most notably in the form of Charity Organization Societies. Carlyle’s view of “philanthropism,” as he terms it, is unequivocally condemnatory and this provides a useful counterpoint to Dickens’ novel, which appears to advance equally sharp criticisms but does so with a radically different end in mind. Like Carlyle, Dickens both questions the misplaced priorities of much philanthropy and attempts to prescribe the proper object of charity. He does this first, and most overtly, in his representations of Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs. Pardiggle, the professional philanthropists. The problem, as embodied by these women, is that philanthropy is simultaneously programmatic and indiscriminate (indiscriminate because programmatic). Dickens uses both figures to introduce and offer dubious versions of a maxim that will become increasingly central to the novel: charity begins at home. Philanthropy works as the chief category of social relation in Dickens’ writing in part because it is transmutable between the boundaries of professional and amateur, public and private.

Unlike other institutions, such as Chancery, which Dickens criticizes as immutable and incorrigible, philanthropy, once its most egregious manifestations are exposed and critiqued, can take other forms. Dickens uses satire to differentiate and adjudicate between various practices; this eventually enables him to advance a model of social identity with less reservation or the taint of contingency. Dickens demonstrates this most notably in his portrait of the philanthropist, Mrs. Jellyby, who devotes all of her energies in an effort to “civilize” African natives while her own family languishes. Dickens contrasts this “telescopic philanthropy” with the person to person service of his heroine, Esther Summerson. Esther moves across social strata offering aid to those she comes to know. Her radiating “circle of duty” touches many lives as it “gradually and naturally expand[s] itself.” Dickens can offer this idealized portrait of charitable action because he has made philanthropy a preliminary rather than primary object of satire.

In other words, Dickens’ sardonic treatment of philanthropy is not an end in itself; rather, its intention is purgative, to rescue philanthropy from the instrumentalizing influence of other Victorian institutions such as the courts or parliament or the churches. His very purpose was the renovation of charity. To cite this article, please use: Frank Christianson, ‘Charity in the Novels of Charles Dickens’, Voluntary Action History Society blog (1 October 2012). Available at Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List On a raw November afternoon, London is enshrouded in heavy fog made harsher by chimney smoke. The fog seems thickest in the vicinity of the High Court of Chancery. The court, now in session, is hearing an aspect of the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. A "little mad old woman" is, as always, one of the spectators. Two ruined men, one a "sallow prisoner," the other a man from Shropshire, appear before the court — to no avail.

Toward the end of the sitting, the Lord High Chancellor announces that in the morning he will meet with "the two young people" and decide about making them wards of their cousin. Analysis This first chapter makes Dickens' social criticism explicit and introduces one of the book's principal themes: the ruin that the Chancery Court has made and will continue to make of many people's lives. Court costs and lawyers' fees have already exhausted all the inheritance money in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The case has gone on for so many years and has "become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means." Rather than producing clarity and justice, the court — like much of the workings of the law in general — produces a fog that obscures, a fog that creates confusion and depression in which people are lost. The "little mad old woman" is one of these; the prisoner and the Shropshire man (Gridley) are others. The effect of presenting them is to persuade us that Dickens is right: The High Court of Chancery is an institutionalized abuse of the law. Since "the two young people" (Ada Clare and Richard Carstone) and their cousin (Mr.

John Jarndyce) will soon figure prominently in the story, Dickens prepares us for the eventual meeting. Their names are not given here; they would mean nothing to us at this point, and Dickens strengthens his attack on the court by implying that the Chancellor, though he is "Lord" and "High," is, as usual, too negligent and uninterested to be able to recall their names. Chapter 1 moves ponderously, dramatizing the inaction of Chancery and the stagnation of the lives that wait for its decisions. There is nothing here to satisfy a taste for fast-moving action. To stick with Dickens, we have to adjust to his method, which is to offer a feast in description and in language, rather than in a rapidly developing plot. My favourite Dickens: Bleak House | Books | The Guardian My favourite Dickens: Bleak House By Kathryn Hughes 'Dickens never wrote better' … Gillian Anderson (left) as Lady Dedlock and Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther in the BBC serial of Bleak House, 2005.

Photograph: BBC/Mike Hogan Friday 23 September 2011 17.55 EDT First published on Friday 23 September 2011 17.55 EDT Close Monthly serial, March 1852-September 1853 Dickens wrote his ninth novel at that perfect hinge in his career when he was finally able to channel his creative exuberance into a sustained and sophisticated piece of narrative art. All the usual fun is here, but it's in the service of a sustained moral inquiry into the evil that manmade systems do to the people they're supposed to help. I think it's Dickens's best book and, given that it's all about Chancery, I'd like to call expert witnesses. So here they are, the very unalike GK Chesterton and Vladimir Nabokov, both of whom agree that Dickens never wrote better.

There's that extraordinary opening, describing a murky November day in London where there is "as much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be so wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill". It's an extraordinary image, stretching and collapsing time in the outrageous notion of a prehistoric monster let loose in legal London. Anyone who thinks that the high Victorian novel is a synonym for plodding realism really ought to read this top-hatted version of Jurassic Park. They should read Bleak House too if they're convinced that omniscient narrators are the only kind you find in novels of the 1850s. To be sure, Dickens has one of these, an all-seeing, weighty cove who can hover over roofs and barge through walls and show us all the characters from Jo the crossing sweeper, to Miss Flite in her birdcage lodgings, to Mr Bucket, the inscrutable detective. But there's another narrator too: Esther Summerson, as slippery and blind as any postmodern trickster.

The two narratives wind round each other like a double helix, generating new kinds of mysteries between them. Anyone too who likes to trot out that old line about Dickens not being able to do psychology, or women, or both, should try Bleak House. In Esther Summerson, the little busybody with the jangling keys and the plain face, he created an uncannily accurate portrait of how sanctimoniously awful someone with low self-esteem can be. Once you realise it's OK to want to slap Esther around a bit, she becomes a wonder of psychological observation. Brilliant too is Caddy Jellyby, the neglected daughter of the "telescopic philanthropist" Mrs Jellyby, who is more interested in helping the African tribe of Borrioboola-Gha than attending to her adolescent daughter. Caddy's fierce sulkiness, her miserable habit of hating the ones she loves the most, and her sweet redemption through love to an equally scarred child, Prince Turveydrop, strike me as absolutely real. Of course there's nothing new about Dickens being able to create wonderful characters.

The difference here is that, while Harold Skimpole, Mr Tulkinghorn, Krook et al fizz with bright particularity, their job is to service the story – in Dickens's earlier novels the endless cameos tend to derail the narrative. Bleak House represents the author at a perfectly poised late-middle moment in his extraordinary art.

Question: In which Charles Dickens Novel does Esther Summerson appear?
Answer: Bleak house